I am trying to install Vector 5.9 DLX on a HP Compaq 330d Microtower with 640 meg of RAM, Nvidia FX 5200 Video card and 40 gig HD. Vector will be the only OS on this machine. It did have Windows 2000 on it that I wiped out. It starts to install the first package and I get this prompt:

Cannot extract required /veclinux.tlz. Maybe the file is corrupt, or the partition is full. The current installation is in an unknown state.

The CD was burned at a low speed and it I believe it was a clean burn. I admit I am mystified.

Did you run the integrity test on the packages from the menu? I've found that to be a life saver on more than one occasion.

If its not that, I would have to wonder if the CD drive is giving problems. In the days before I gave up Ubuntu as a bad joke, I had a number of problems if DMA was enabled on the CD. Disabling it got me out of trouble.

I'm not sure if there is a cheatcode to allow you to disable DMA for the CD - maybe someone else can help with that...

Thanks for the replies. I am going to buy some different CDs and tell you my results. Also I have heard that you should set your CD burner up as a slave to your HD and get a better burn. Is that true? Right now on my other machine (which only runs Linux as well ) the DVD writer is paired with a Combo drive.

Thanks for the replies. I am going to buy some different CDs and tell you my results. Also I have heard that you should set your CD burner up as a slave to your HD and get a better burn. Is that true? Right now on my other machine (which only runs Linux as well ) the DVD writer is paired with a Combo drive.

I would have said the opposite - I normally try to keep the source drive (hard drive or optical) on a different channel). I also normally try to make the burner master on the channel its on.

No go. I bought Memorex and Verbatim CD and they did not work. Could a bad CD drive give kernel panic errors? I have tried memtest and no errors were reported, however, when tried to install different linux I used the memtest on that CD and an error was reported. Which do I rely on the separate CD which reported no errors or the one supplied on the liveCD?

No go. I bought Memorex and Verbatim CD and they did not work. Could a bad CD drive give kernel panic errors? I have tried memtest and no errors were reported, however, when tried to install different linux I used the memtest on that CD and an error was reported. Which do I rely on the separate CD which reported no errors or the one supplied on the liveCD?

If a CD drive corrupts data as it is read, it could certainly give a kernel panic. As to which memtest to trust, I guess it depends on how you booted it. If both were being booted from CD, I'd wonder about a bad burn. If the one that reports errors is booted from a CD and the one that doesn't is booted from a floppy I would suspect the CD.

As a test, if you machine has a flioppy, downloading a floppy version of memtest and running from floppy might help to narrow the cause of the problem.

Another thing you might be able to try is to take your VL CD to another machine and see if it gives problems in it. Depends on having another machine available for testing, of course.

I have the same error - tried burning on a different CD, did the md5sum check ( succesful ), always check the packages before the installation start, basically runing out of ideas - as this stops in the same moment always, Im thinking if this really is possible to be the fault of the CD drive reading the installation CD.

I am now trying some different configurations, or just basically clicking fast thru the install process, taking all in defaults. And see where that will get me.

Any more help or perhaps some more practical knowledge would be great.P.

EDIT: Well, I made it. What did I do? Basically, accepted the keymap and everything else as default, choose to mount all directories on the same partition, and choose raiserfs as filesystem for that partition, choose a SWAP on a 512MB linux-swap partition. Installed only the basic packages, none from the additional ones, also unchecked anything else besides the basic type in machine for this one. And it installed itself, even booted.As I need the computer now, I will stay with it for now, but perhaps when I have some more time, I will reinstall and check what was really the cause of the crash.

Installation stops after 372MB. For the last 10MB or so it installed at 1MB increments, before that it loads between 7 and 20MB chunks.The installer flashes up that it has completed, then stops with cannot extract required veclinux.tlz, possibly corrupt or disk full.

I have adjusted the installation options and the formatting of /dev/hda4 to no avail.Booting with the ide kernel stops at 354MB.

CD and HDD are working fine, that partition I'm using has just had gOS 3 on it, installed yesterday. openSUSE 10 was installed over a year ago and upgraded to 11 when it came out. fsck of the partitions and SMART report no problems.

The download is just over 500 MB. I tried it on a Celeron 500 with 64 MB of RAM (minus some for shared graphics). There was a dramatic increase in install speed over the original version. If anyone tries it, please post your results here.